Last time I wrote about concealing bird bling on Takahē. Being flightless we could conceal at time of capture in long grass, behind out of focus foreground elements, or crop the bands out of the image. I didn’t need to resort to digital surgery for any of the images. Arboreal birds are more of a challenge. Kākā at Orokonui are particularly challenging with most sporting a variety of metal and coloured bands on both legs.

In this situation I shoot a lot of images to give options to choose from while keeping an eye out for poses that reduce the visibility of bands.

Having less of the band visible makes digital surgery simpler. First step in reducing the distraction is to desaturate and reduce the luminance of the band and this goes a long way to reducing the distraction.

The next step is to use the clone stamp and healing brush to give a more natural edge and texture to the small part of visible leg.

Sometimes the bands can be completely concealed by the pose and at times concealed enough that simply desaturating and darkening removes the distraction. This following image gives a glimpse of a blue band on the upper leg and a red band on the lower. The only distraction for me is the larger part of the red band so by desaturating and darkening this the distraction is eliminated very simply.

Sometimes there is no option but to resort to digital surgery. The image at the head of this post was a from a sequence as the Kākā moved. In some images both legs were visible with a red band on the left leg and blue band on the right. By choosing an image with the right leg partially hidden I could limit surgery to just one limb. I desaturated and darkened the red band and then used the clone stamp and healing brush to construct an unadorned leg. I quite enjoy doing these little reconstructive procedures but they are quite time intensive so not something you want to do if you can avoid the problem at capture.

This type of intervention is obviously not acceptable for certain competitions. but is something I am comfortable with when making an image trying to showcase a bird at it’s best.

Photos all of the same individual Kākā with Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 400mm f4.5 VR S